Circularity and Insufficiency Worries

This chapter addresses circularity and insufficiency worries that have been raised against Locke’s same consciousness account of personal identity. The chapter distinguishes different versions of circularity problems and shows that Locke has resources to respond to Joseph Butler’s circularity objection. The more pressing worry concerns the question of whether sameness of consciousness is sufficient for personal identity, which is the so-called insufficiency worry. A response to this question calls for an examination of whether sameness of consciousness can ontologically ground personal identity. The chapter proposes that Locke has resources to accept, on the basis of probable reasoning, that same consciousness that has a metaphysical foundation that most likely has relational structure. The advantage of this reading is that it brings to light that he not merely criticizes substance accounts of identity, but also that he has the resources to develop a plausible—though probable—alternative that avoids circularity and insufficiency.

Reason, Belief, and the Passions

Hume said that reason alone cannot motivate and that passions are required to produce volitions and actions. It is argued that the widely, though not universally, held “Humean” view of motivation—that beliefs require desires to motivate actions—does not accurately reflect Hume’s own view. The author argues here that beliefs, especially beliefs about pleasure, do motivate. But beliefs are produced by probable reasoning. And this seems to imply that reason alone does motivate, i.e., produces, via beliefs, volitions and actions. It is argued that the seeming inconsistency that appears to result is only apparent. An interpretation of what Hume means by “reason alone” is provided.

The Necessity of “Necessity”: Hume’s Psychology of Sophisticated Causal Inference

Much of what Hume calls probable reasoning is deliberate and reflective. Since there are aspects to Hume's psychology that tempt some commentators to think, on the contrary, that for Hume all such reasoning is simple and immediate, I will be concerned to emphasize Hume's recognition of the sophisticated sort of probable reasoning (section I). Though some of the details of my case may be new, the overall point of this section should not be news to recent scholarship. But once we recognize that this reflective and deliberate reasoning constitutes a significant portion of all probable reasoning, it becomes legitimate to ask how Hume accommodates this reasoning in his psychology, his ‘science of man.’ I believe that Hume has an answer to this question. I will explain in what way Hume could have thought that probable reasoning can be sophisticated: in short, sophisticated probable reasoning involves the use of the concept of evidence or epistemic support (section II). Hume's psychology, constrained by his empiricism, must therefore explain how we come to have this idea.